Kids Gluten Free Tips
These tips are aimed at kids and helping them to have a normal but gluten free life.
Include older siblings. If you have a child who needs to eat gluten free consider this a challenge for the whole family rather than just that child. If they have an older sibling give them some responsibility and make them feel far more included in helping their younger brother or sister to stay gluten free. Whilst your child with coeliac condition may not yet be able to read or interpret the ingredients in a food labels you will find that their older brother or sister probably can with some help, and is able to do this. Remember, you will not always be with your child when they are out but there is a greater chance that their sibling will be with them and can help them to stay gluten free if offered some food at a friend’s or at a party.
Educate your child’s class. Coeliac condition and the need to be gluten free is not a stigma, they are a medical condition and compromised by lack of education. Offer to go to your child’s class and do a quick presentation on what coeliac condition is and what foods are gluten free. This will help your child’s classmates to understand better and help your child when at school. Remember, the class teacher may also be very vague as to what foods contain gluten and why there is a need to be gluten free and they will benefit from this presentation also. Don’t be afraid of tackling this head on, there will be many other children in the class with food intollerances some of which are far worse such as peanut allergy.
Reward your child for spotting gluten in foods. If your child is offered a sweet by an adult at a child’s party or an outing the last thing you want is for them to be put in a position of refusing the gift and not been able to adequately explain why. It is much better if you train them to accept the sweet and then immediately take it to you or save it to refer to you later so that you can then exchange it for a better, favourite sweet or better still two sweets. In this way they are not disadvantaged, avoid any embarrassing situations and are actually rewarded for being diligent with regard to any streets they are offered.
Coeliac Disease in Children
Coeliac disease is very hard to identify in children. Intollerance to gluten can exhibit itself at any age although very young babies will not have been exposed to gluten if breast-fed or given quality manufactured baby foods, hence coeliac and disorder will not be observed. Once the child has started to be weaned they will incur gluten in their diet and any gluten intollerance will be noticed some three to six months after this stage.
With mild gluten intolerance you might see that your child is restless after eating, has a mildly swollen abdomen and is generally irritable. Actually the reaction to gluten might be so mild that it is takes many years before the gradual reduced ability to absorb food nutrients shows as poor appetite with poor growth and a skinny appearance.
In the more extreme situations your child could refuse to eat, be lacking in energy, have a large, swollen abdomen and produce pale, greasy stools with each nappy change. Continued exposure to gluten will lead to a ‘failure to thrive’ as your child’s ability to absorb food gradually decreases and they extract little value from each meal.
If, after discussions with your doctor, you suspect that your child is intollerant to gluten and has coeliac disease one of the first actions to be taken is to order a coeliac blood test. Modern tests are very sensitive to the antibodies the body produces when it reacts to gluten and show with high percentage accuracy where the gluten intolerance is present.
Coeliac disease in children is then confirmed by a biopsy where a microscopic tube is passed through the mouth and stomach to facilitate the extraction of a small section of the small intestine. The presence of gluten in a Celiacs diet leads to the flattening of the small hairlike projections in the small intestine limiting their ability to absorb food nutrients. As this process carries on these hairlike projections are damaged and this can be seen under a microscope when examining the biopsy.
This process is not as stressful as it may appear although of course it is not undertaken lightly. Coeliac disease in children needs to be diagnosed properly as other conditions, such as lactose intollerance, can produce very similar symptoms and you do not want to condemn your child to follow a gluten free diet for the rest of their life on a miss diagnosis.
Childrens Gluten Free Tips
These are some of our best gluten free tips for children.
Birthday parties. When your child is invited to a birthday party it is important that they are able to join in the birthday meal and not appear to be different from the other children. Telephone the party host to in advance and ask what is going to be on the menu. If you ask early you will have a good chance of influencing the food selection to be gluten free. If there are going to be some standard children’s party fare items such as sausages or cakes make sure that you supply some similar gluten free items or, prepare some in advance which your child can take with them. In this way your child will be able to be a full member of the birthday team and the event will not cause them distress by highlighting any differences in theire eating habits versus the other children.
Sandwich boxes. Rather than being seen as different and disadvantaged make sure that your child appears to be the special, advantaged one whenever there is a picnic. Children are far more concerned with the packaging of foods and the Sandwich box they arrive in rather than the actual content of the food. Whilst, at times you might feel slightly restricted in what you can prepare as a sandwich for your child to take to a picnic there are no restrictions on the sandwich box they will take. Get the latest, trendy sandwich box and pack it full of gluten free items. Listen carefully at the picnic and you will hear the other children asking their parents why they can’t have the latest sandwich box rather than asking why can’t Little Johnny or Mary cannot eat gluten.
Gluten free snack packs. If your child is invited round to a neighbour or friend to play make sure you prepare a gluten free snack pack for them to take. This relieves the pressure from the host parent from wondering what they can prepare by way of a snack for your child and removes any barriers to setting the play date. You can also relax when your child is away from home knowing that, if they are hungry, they will be eating gluten free food rather than having a gluten accident.